The first post-halving Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty adjustment is tomorrow, and it’s likely bringing much-needed relief to BTC miners that experienced their third pay cut a week ago.
Just six days ago, following the historic third halving of BTC mining reward – lowering the block subsidy from BTC 12.5 to BTC 6.25 per block – it was estimated that mining difficulty, a measure showing how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, would rise 4.5% and above its March all-time high to 16.83 T. This number was dropping already at the time.
At this point, a bit more than a day before the next difficulty adjustment, that result seems highly unlikely, as, on Monday morning (UTC time), major Bitcoin mining pool BTC.com estimates a 3.14% decrease to 15.60 T. The last time the values were at approximately this level was in mid-February of this year, though at that time, the difficulty was on an ascending trajectory.
Meanwhile, it seems that after the initial drop, hashrate, or the computational power of the Bitcoin network, is bottoming out, which might result in lower than now estimated drop in mining difficulty. However, as previously reported, it might take weeks until we have a clear picture of the Bitcoin network after its third halving.
Bitcoin hashrate in the past month
According to Daniel Frumkin, Analyst at Braiins, the company behind Slush Pool and the Stratum V2 protocol for pooled mining, the total network hashrate hasn’t dropped post-halving as much as many people were anticipating, likely since the significant BTC price drop in March already squeezed many inefficient miners out. Meanwhile, Johnson Xu, the Chief Analyst at token data and rating agency TokenInsight, estimates that the network participants need to take a bit more time to readjust their positions, so some volatility in the hashrate, especially going into the next difficulty adjustment, is to be expected.
At pixel time (10:46 UTC), BTC trades at USD 9,651 and is up by 1% in a day and 9% in a week.
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